I wrote a long post on TIGSource about it, which touches on most of the issues. I still think it's worth the effort, though.

(Oct 9, 2011 08:21 PM)phydeaux Wrote: I couldn't repro the crash again after finishing the game with each character. Once again, great game.

That's cool, I worked out a way to reproduce it locally (at least, I hope it's the same crash!), but it's a major pain to debug... slowly working toward a fix. Great to hear you finished the game with all classes, I don't know if anyone else has done that yet!

FINALLY beat it with the Spy, which brings me to all five. And I only JUST NOW saw the update that only starts you a room back on death

I really love how each class makes it a completely different game. And I actually like the graphics as they are-- they're actually extremely functional, convey everything that needs to be conveyed clearly and crisply, and have some cool stylish elements as well, such as the subtle shading and ALL the effects. Really cool stuff.

I wonder what you would think about replacing the health bar with some sort of change to the unit? Color change or alpha change or something? Maybe a decreasing radius of the fill of the circle (leaving the outer radius)? And food would obviously increase it again?
Alex

Interesting idea, I like it! The health bars that are there now were originally implemented just for debugging, but they stuck around. I'd like to display it some other way for the player that's more numeric, or something like the hearts in the Legend of Zelda, so you can get a better idea of exactly how much health you have. You start with 20 health, and it goes up to 30 and then 45 when you level up, but you probably don't even notice since the bar is normalized. I'd rather enemy health be *less* obvious (except possibly in cases where the player gets a powerup or uses an ability (spy only?) that gives them additional information), so a subtle appearance change would work well.

Nice update! The new effects are really slick. Honestly I'd eschew more realistic graphics in favor of more abstract stylish stuff like the doors and key effects. They look really cool and set it apart from the tons of games that use sprites.

(Nov 1, 2011 11:00 AM)ThemsAllTook Wrote: You start with 20 health, and it goes up to 30 and then 45 when you level up, but you probably don't even notice since the bar is normalized.

FWIW I never noticed that after like 10 total playthroughs over the course of the contest. The floaty damage numbers I think fix that, at least a little-- it doesn't make it immediately obvious but I would have noticed over time that I was taking more damage and living.

So fun!
I also recommend staying abstract. Fighting with shapes is actually a very fun concept. Changing the color or size of the shape would be a great way to convey this. I feel like I'm moving a circle around (perhaps just because I've played it this way for a long time), so it all seems to make a lot of sense.

(Nov 1, 2011 01:11 PM)JustinFic Wrote: Nice update! The new effects are really slick. Honestly I'd eschew more realistic graphics in favor of more abstract stylish stuff like the doors and key effects. They look really cool and set it apart from the tons of games that use sprites.

I find it cool as well, but the only real issue I have against it is that it really makes it hard to judge what enemies are what when all enemies are uniform circles with variations in color. It's difficult to tell when an enemy's shield is up, it's difficult to tell what weapon an enemy uses, and it's difficult to tell what kind of health the enemy has before attacking it.